Day: October 5, 2016

Jacqueline Isaac’s Testimony to Congress, Part 2 (above).

(Also see parts 1 through 6 of Jacqueline Isaac’s testimony to Congress at this link.)

Following is a summary of this CNS news article: 

A lawyer and humanitarian Jacqueline Isaac gave testimony before the House Foreign Affairs Committee in May 2015 saying that the Islamic State wants to torture and destroy the Yazidi people to “wipe them off the face of the Earth.”   She also explained that they are trying to force the girls to convert to Islam and they are raping them.  Her testimony was not covered by the major news networks ABC, CBS, or NBC.

Issac is vice president of the humanitarian group Roads of Success, and she traveled to Iraq and Syria to meet with many of the victims of the Islamic State, particularly Yazidi girls and women who had been sold into sex slavery by the Islamists and later managed to escape.

Isaac recounts meeting a group of girls who were told by their captors that they would become Muslims once they were raped whether they wanted to convert or not, and then the men actually did rape them.

Isaac said, “Today, it starts with the Yazidis.  Tomorrow, it’s going to be not only the Christians but every woman that doesn’t fit into their philosophy.  We need to stop the menace that’s going on there.  We need to stop it at its route.  This is the nerve center.  Right now, all the crazies from all over the world are coming to this center point, to this nerve center.  If we can cut the snake at its head, we can defuse them. … Their sex trafficking is systematic and it will continue.”

Following is a summary of this USA Today article:

Starting this first week of October, the government will pay for gender reassignment treatments and surgeries for soldiers, with an estimated expense between $2.4 million to $8.4 million per year.

The RAND Corporation conducted a study showing that there are between 1,320 and 6,630 transgender troops in the active duty force of 1.3 million, and of those troops between 30 and 40 would like hormone treatment, and 25 to 30 would seek surgery.

The policy of the Defense Department is if a service member’s ability to serve is hindered by a “medical condition or medical treatment related to their gender identity,” they will be treated, but the commander must approve the timing of the medical treatment.

Starting October 3, the military health program will cover therapy and hormone treatments for Tricare beneficiaries, and gender reassignment surgeries for active-duty personnel will be conducted either at military hospitals, or if not available there it will be provided at a private hospitals paid by Tricare.

Ron Crews, executive director of Chaplain Alliance for Religious Liberty, said it is a wasteful allocation of money since soldiers undergoing treatments or surgeries are unqualified for deployment for extended periods of time.  “I think this is a gross misuse of military medical dollars that should be used to make our military forces deployable or to help those who are wounded or injured while they are deployed,” he said.

The RAND corporation says hormone therapy doesn’t require a designated recovery time, but reassignment surgeries can leave soldiers non-deployable for up to 135 days in the case of male-to-female genital surgery, and 6 to 20% of those receiving “vaginoplasty” surgery may have complications.

Aaron Belkin, director of the Palm Center, a public policy think tank, says the actual costs of the surgeries would be lower due to it mitigating serious conditions that impose costs such as suicidality.

Currently at least five transgender troops are seeking treatment outside the military health care system, including one seeking sex-reassignment surgery.  Three are sailors or Marines, and the other two are airmen.

The Army recently assured “Chelsea” [previously Brad] Manning, who is serving a 35-year prison sentence for leaking national security secrets, that they would pay for his gender reassignment surgery while he’s in prison.

Following is a summary of this FOX 5 D.C. article: 

A Maryland man has been charged with plotting to kill a U.S. service member on behalf of ISIS in a sting operation.

Nelash Mohamed Das, 24, a Bangladesh citizen who came to the U.S. when he was four years old, has been arrested after months of contact with undercover agents posting as ISIS members when he attempted to kill a U.S. service member in an attack that was set up with false information provided by the FBI.

On September 11, Das met with his FBI source and said he was 100% committed to conducting an attack, saying “That’s like my goal in life.”  The following day he said he would like to be paid by ISIS for doing the killings but he is willing to do it for free also.  He also said that he wants to specifically target U.S. military personnel.

On September 28, Das’s confidential informant provided him with information about a target who was believed to be a member of the U.S. military.  Das believed his information came from ISIS and he would be paid $80,000 for the attack, and he was arrested as he was driving to the location of the target by waiting FBI agents.

Das faces a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison, prosecutors say.